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The first two books (Laski and Leeds) contrast in an
interesting way. Leeds has captured the Lord Chancellor’s Department’s Family
Courts Outcomes Committee; see p1 of Ill
Eagle 20. They are committed to falsifying statistics. Ivor 2sep02 BL Shelf mark X.529/2065 Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy, pub. Cresset Press 1961, p v TO MY
HUSBAND p145 Ecstasy and
Sexual Love Among
contemporary secular people of the kind that composed my questionnaire group
sexual love appears to be a common trigger [of ecstasy]. In this group sexual
love was named as a trigger by 43% of people (18 women and 8 men). Eleven of
these people (6 men and 5 women) made unmistakable references to sexual
intercourse, and of other references to ‘love’, ‘being in love’, etc., sexual
intercourse was probably implied in several cases. It is
certain that the people who claimed ecstasy from sexual intercourse did not
confuse ecstasy with the pleasures of sexual orgasm. Many of those questioned
were married people, yet they did not claim to have known ecstasy more often
than people who named only other triggers [of ecstasy]. In the questionnaire
group, of those who said that ecstasy had been induced in them by intercourse
and named no other trigger, none claimed ecstasy more often than in tens,
while two people claimed it once only and one person twice. Of the people who
gave sexual intercourse together with other triggers, none claimed ecstasy
more often than in tens, and most people in units. If then my
respondents are not all abnormally low in their sexual responses, the
feelings that they identify as ecstasy
cannot be equated with the feelings they normally derive from sexual
intercourse, and this is true both for men and for women. The
evidence that ecstasy is a rare phenomenon is not, then, modified by
considerations of ecstasies induced by sexual intercourse. Ecstasies with
this trigger, at least among the kind of contemporary secular people of the
kind I questioned, are no more or less rare than ecstasies induced by nature
or by art. Nor do they
appear to differ appreciably in content. .... Now from the other book,
below; “Penetration is an act of great symbolic significance by which the oppressor enters the body of the oppressed. But it is more than a symbol, its function and effect is the punishment and control of women. It is not just rape which serves this function but every act of penetration, even when it is euphemistically described as ‘making love’. We have all heard men say about an uppity woman, ‘What she needs is a good fuck’. This is no idle remark. Every man knows that a fucked woman is woman under the control of men, whose body is open to men, a woman who is tamed and broken in.” The New Encyclopaedia
Britannica, vol. 10 Micropaedia, 15th edn., p676; sexual
intercourse, also called COITUS, or COPULATION, reproductive
act in which the male reproductive organ (in humans and other higher animals)
enters the female reproductive tract. .... In human beings, a pattern
of physiological events occurs during sexual arousal and intercourse. ....
The basic pattern is similar in both sexes, regardless of specific sexual
stimulus. .... BL Shelf mark
YK.1994.a.2929 Ed. Onlywomen Press,
Love your enemy? The
debate between heterosexual feminism and political lesbianism , pub. Onlywomen Press Ltd., 38 Mount Pleasant, London WC1X 0AP Leeds
Revolutionary Feminist Group (WIRES
81) Paper first
given to a conference in sep 1979 p3 We are
publishing this pamphlet because we think that the discussion among feminists
about political lesbianism is important. The Leeds Revolutionary Feminists
paper was originally written as a conference paper and then published in
WIRES, the internal national newsletter of the women’s liberation movement.
Many women have heard of the debate who have never read any of the papers. It
generated so much interest and feeling that we wanted to make the arguments
available in a more permanent form. But our publication of the Paper and the
ensuing correspondence does not mean that we as a collective necessarily
agree with or support the positions stated or the ways in which they are
stated. .... p5 We know that the
question of whether all feminists should be lesbians is not new. [ Smacking and More
Note 1] We have had to work out our ideas on
the subject because often when we talk about our politics and what it means
to say men are the enemy, with other women, we are asked whether we are
saying that all feminists should be lesbians. We realise that
the topic is explosive. It is something we are supposed to talk about at home
and in close and trusted groups of friends and not make political statements
about the movement, lest our heterosexual sisters accuse us of woman-hating.
Is it true that we must conceal our strong beliefs on the subject when
talking with other feminists? We would like to raise the whole issue for
discussion in a workshop; not just whether all feminists should be lesbians,
but precisely why we think they should be and whether and how we may begin to
talk about it more openly. We do think that
all feminists can and should be political lesbians. Our definition of a
political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. Id does
not mean compulsory sexual activity with women. The paper is divided into two
parts. The first covers the reasons why we think serious feminists have no
choice but to abandon heterosexuality. The second is arranged in the form of
questions raised and comments made to us about the subject of political
lesbianism and the way we think they should be answered. (1) What
heterosexuality is and why it must be abandoned. Sexuality What part does
sexuality play in the oppression of women? Only in the system of oppression that
is male supremacy does the oppressor actually invade and colonise the
interior of the body of the oppressed. Attached to all forms of sexual
behaviour are meanings of dominance and submission, power and powerlessness,
conquest and humiliation. There is very special importance attached to
sexuality under male supremacy when every sexual reference, every sexual
joke, every sexual image serves to remind a woman of her invaded centre and a
man of his power. Why all this fuss in our culture about sex? Because it is
specifically through sexuality that the fundamental oppression, that of men
over women, is maintained. (This should be a book, can’t really be gone into
now.) The heterosexual
couple. The heterosexual
couple is the basic unit of the political structure of male supremacy. In it
each individual woman comes under the control of an individuals man. It is
more efficient by far than keeping women in ghettoes, camps or even sheds at
the bottom of the garden. In the couple, love and sex are used to obscure the
realities of oppression, to prevent women identifying with each other in
order to revolt, and from identifying ‘their’ man as part of the enemy. Any
woman who takes part in a heterosexual couple helps to shore up male
supremacy by making its foundations stronger. Penetration. Penetration
(wherever we refer to penetration, we mean penetration by the penis) is not
necessary to the sexual pleasure of women or even of men. Its performance
leads to reproduction or tedious/dangerous forms of contraception. Why then
does it lie at the heart of the sexualised culture of this particular stage
of male supremacy? Why are more and more women, at younger and younger ages,
encouraged by psychiatrists, doctors, marriage guidance counsellors, the porn
industry, the growth movement, lefties and masters and Johnson to get fucked
more and more often? Because the form of oppression of women under male
supremacy is changing. As more women are able to earn a little more money and
the pressures of reproduction are relieved so the hold of individual men and
men as a class over women is being strengthened through sexual control. The function of
penetration. Penetration is
an act of great symbolic significance by which the oppressor enters the body
of the oppressed. But it is more than a symbol, its function and effect is
the punishment and control of women., It is not just rape which serves this
function but every act of penetration, even when it is euphemistically
described as ‘making love’. We have all heard men say about an uppity woman,
‘What she needs is a good fuck’. This is no idle remark. Every man knows that
a fucked woman is woman under the control of men, whose body is open to men,
a woman who is tamed and broken in. Before the sexual revolution there was no
mistake being about penetration being for the benefit of men. The sexual
revolution is a con trick. It serves to disguise the oppressive nature of
male sexuality and we are told that penetration is for our benefit as well. Every act of
penetration for a woman is an invasion which undermines her confidence and
saps her strength. For a man it is an act of power and mastery which makes
him stronger, not just over a woman but over all women. So every woman who
engages in penetration bolsters the oppressor and reinforces the class power
of men. (2) Questions
and Comments. (a) Bit it
sounds like you are saying that heterosexual women are the enemy! No. Men are the
enemy. Heterosexual women are collaborators with the enemy. All the good work
that our heterosexual feminist sisters do for women is undermined by the
counter-revolutionary activity they engage in
with men. Being a heterosexual feminist is like being in the resistance in
Nazi-occupied Europe where in the daytime you blow up a bridge, in the
evening you rush to repair it. .... Every woman who lives with or fucks a man
helps to maintain the oppression of her sisters and hinders our struggle. (b) But we don’t
do penetration, my boyfriend and me. If you engage in
any form of sexual activity with a man you are reinforcing his class power.
You may escape the most extreme form of ritual humiliation but because of the
emotional accretions to any form of heterosexual behaviour, men gain great
advantages and women lose. There is no such thing as ‘pure’ sexual pleasure. Such
‘pleasure’ is created by fantasy, memory and experience. Sexual ‘pleasure’
cannot be separated from the emotions that accompany the exercise of power
and the experience of powerlessness. (If you don’t do
penetration, why not take a woman lover? If you strip a man of his unique
ability to humiliate, you are left with a creature who is merely worse at
every sort of sensual activity than a woman is). (c) But my boyfriend
does not penetrate me, I enclose him. A rose is a rose
by any other name and so is penetration. Or possibly, ‘You can’t make a silk
purse out of a boar’s ear’ is a more apt expression. The kindest
interpretation is to say that believing in enclosure is wishful thinking. It
would be more realistic to say that it is cop-out and a rationalisation for
continuing the activity. Enclosure, where an active vagina (helped by
strengthening exercises) sucks in a penis could only take place where a woman
and a man were born fully formed, totally innocent, on an uninhabited desert
island (where they might well never discover fucking anyway). No act of
penetration takes place in isolation. Each takes place in a system of
relationships that is male supremacy. As no individual woman can be
‘liberated’ under male supremacy, so no act of penetration can escape its
function and its symbolic power. (d) But I like
fucking. Giving up
fucking for a feminist is about taking your politics seriously. Women who are
socialists are prepared to give up many things which they might enjoy because
they see how these things tie into the support system of economic class
oppression which they are fighting. They will resist buying Cape apples
because the profits go to South Africa. Obviously it is more difficult for
some feminists to give up penetration which is so fundamental to the system
of oppression which we are fighting. (e) It is much
easier for you in the lesbian ghetto than for me. I have to live out the
contradiction of my politics which is a hard, relentless, day-by-day struggle
with the man I live with. That’s simply
not true. Living without heterosexual privilege is difficult and dangerous.
Try going into pubs with groups of women or living in a women’s house where
youths in the street lay siege with stones and catcalls. Heterosexual
privileges are male approval, more safety from physical attack .... (f) But lesbian
relationships are also fucked up by power struggles That is
sometimes true, but the power of one woman is never backed up by a superior
sex-class position. Struggles between women do not directly strengthen the
oppression of all women or build up the strength of men. Personal perfection
in relationships is not a realistic goal under male supremacy. Lesbianism is
a necessary political choice, part of the tactics of our struggle, not a
passport to paradise. (g) I won’t give
up what I’ve got unless what you offer me is better We never offered
you a rose garden. We do not say that all feminists should be lesbians
because it is wonderful. The lesbian dream of woman-loving, bare-breasted,
guitar-playing softballers, gambolling on the sun-soaked hillsides is more
suited to California, supposing it bears any resemblance to reality, than to
Hackney. But yet, it is
better to be lesbian. The advantages include the pleasure of knowing that you
are not directly servicing men, living without the strain of a glaring
contradiction in your personal life, uniting the personal and the political,
loving and putting your energies into those you are fighting alongside rather
than those you are fighting against, and the possibility of greater trust,
honesty and directness in your communication with women. Communication
with heterosexual women is fraught with difficulties, with static which comes
from their relationships with men. Men distort such communication. A
heterosexual woman will have a different perception and reaction to things
you say; she may be defensive and it is likely to be thinking ‘What about
Nigel?’ When you talk of women’s interests and the future and survival of
women, her imagination may be blocked by concern for her man and his
brothers. You feel under pressure to say nice things which will not threaten
her. (h) You are
guilt-tripping us No.
Guilt-tripping is used to prevent women from telling the truth as they see it
and from talking about hard political realities. It is you, heterosexual
sisters, who are guilt-tripping us. It is possible to stop collaborating and
asking you to do that is not guilt-tripping. (i) Are all lesbian
feminists political lesbians? No. Some women who
are lesbians and feminists work closely with men on the male left (either in
groups or in women’s causes with them), or provide mouthpieces within the
women’s liberation movement for men’s ideas even when non-aligned. It may
well be that these women find it more difficult to see that men are the enemy
because they are treated as substitute but inferior men by left males and are
able to feel superior to the straight women who are still struggling against
sexual oppression in their beds. They are not woman-identified and gain
privileges through associating with men and putting forward ideas which are
only mildly unacceptable to male left ideology. (j) But you don’t
understand how difficult it is to give up men. Most of us know
from personal experience how practically difficult and painful it is to
decide not to fuck again and get out from the man we live with any/or love.
It is usually only done with the love, support and strength of other women
who have made that break and whose criticism and straight-talking spurred us
on. We know that for some women, e.g. those with children, those with easy
access to movement, and those without the experience of living on their own,
the break is more difficult than for others and they need more time and practical support. We know how difficult
it is to find a women’s house to move into and what it is like to feel like a
‘new girl’ at the women’s disco. But part of the support must be in
explaining as clearly as possible the political reasons for our own choice and
talking honestly about all the difficulties with the women who are making it. p11 Dear Wires, Leeds
Revolutionary Feminist Group’s paper “Political lesbianism ....” offended and
angered me, but I’m glad they wrote it .... I know there’s
unspoken tension between lesbians and heterosexual feminists. We’re
suspicious of each other .... Standard, sexist
heterosexual sex with penetration as the unquestioned pinnacle is oppressive
to women and tailored to men’s interests, but that’s not news and it’s not
contentious. The tragedy is that women’s tentative attempts to explore and
reveal and challenge standard sexual practice have been killed stone dead by
the two commandments that if you do it with women you’re OK and if you do it
with men, you’re not. “If you engage
in any form of sexual activity with a man you are reinforcing his class
power.” Full stop. End of discussion. But lesbianism,
we’re told, provides “the pleasure of loving without the strain of a glaring
contradiction in your personal life, ....” What’s the
secret? My “personal life” (I’m a lesbian) is riddled with glaring
contradictions .... I have very few friends I really trust and none of them
is a lover. .... I suspect that I’m not [unique]. And where’s the evidence
that heterosexual women can’t and don’t develop close, trusting, loving
relationships with other women? .... In sisterhood, Frankie Rickford. (Wires 82) p40 Dear Wires, I think the
Leeds Revolutionary Femonist paper on political lesbianism is neither
revolutionary nor feminist, nor even about lesbianism. I think it has nothing
whatsoever to do with sexuality. I think it is an exercise in political
maneuvering, part of an attempt to restructure the Women’s Liberation
Movement, to transform the movement from an open, broad-based mass movement
to a closed grouping of cadre units, along the lines of certain left-wing
groups, complete with party line and perty discipline. This is perhaps what
many women want - there is certainly widespread desire for new directions
within the movement - but I would prefer to call a spade a spade. To return to my
opening point, I find the political lesbianism paper profoundly revisionist.
That is, it revises the meanings of two concepts, and depends on these
(hidden) revisions for its emotive force. First of all, it revises the
meaning of “the personal is political”. I want to take up these two points
separately. The first wave,
so to speak, of political lesbianism in the mid-seventies or thereabouts ....
came from within the radical feminist strands of the WLM in America. It is
based on the notion that all women learn an element of self-hatred when they
learn to become women in a society which is fundamentally based on women’s
subjection. All women, whether heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, or asexual,
internalise a further heavy dose of self-hatred when they acquire their
specific sexual orientation. Heterosexist norms, as constructed and exercised
by the male class, ensure that all women, in different ways, feel sexually
isolated from other women. .... The important
thing for me about political lesbianism, as it was first conceived, was that
it was a call for unity among women, based on our common experience of
learning to know and care for each other. I found it a profoundly creative
experience, opening me to parts of myself I had never before acknowledged,
opening me to other women in ways I had never dreamed possible. It allowed me
to feel connected to all women, women I didn’t know, women I didn’t like, women
I admired, women I desired. So now I feel
the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist paper has totally revised the meaning of
political lesbianism. My reading of the paper is that poltical lesbianism has
very little to do with caring for and bonding with other women, but rather to
do with rejecting men. Certainly there is nothing wrong with rejecting men,
most of my best friends reject men, but that is not the same thing as caring
for women. Nor is it a start in the right direction. Just because men are
awful doesn’t mean that women are wonderful. I think we are wonderful, even those of us who are
horrible. .... .... The fact
that many women do experience quite a lot of power in their heterosexual
relationships .... is dismissed. .... I marvel at the paper’s ability to be
so authoritative about every single act of penetration. .... Since
revolutionary feminists don’t have sexual relations with men, then how can
they be so authoritative about what those relations must always be like? .... In sisterhood, Debbie Gregory @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ BL Shelf Mark
YA.1994.b.7503 Christina
Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How
Women Have Betrayed Women, pub. Simon &
Schuster 1994. p44 Recently several male
students at Vassar were falsely accused of date rape. After their innocence
was established, the assistant dean of students, Catherine Comins, said of
their ordeal: “They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would
necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of
self-exploration. ‘How do I see women?’ ‘If I did not violate her, could I
have?’’ Do I have the potential to do to her what they said i did?’ These are
good questions.” Dean Comins clearly feels justified in trumping the common
law principle “presumed innocent until proven guilty” by the new feminist
principle, “guilty even if proven innocent.” Indeed, she believes that the
students are not really innocent after all. How so? Because, being male and
being brought up in the patriarchal culture, they could easily have done what they were falsely accused of
having done, even though they didn’t actually
do it. Where men are concerned, Comins quite sincerely believes in collective
guilt. Moreover, she feels she can rely on her audience to be in general
agreement with her on this. The idea of collective
guilt may sound like the theological doctrine of original sin, but in
Christianity, at least, it applies equally to all human beings. Racists and
gender feminists are more “discriminating.” In the spring of 1993,
nine women students, who were taking a course called “Contemporary Issues in
Feminist Art” at the University of Maryland, distributed posters and fliers
all over the campus with the names of dozens of male students under the
heading “Notice: These Men Are Potential Rapists.” The women knew nothing
whatever about the bearers of the names; they had simply chosen them at
random from the university directory to use in their class project. The
instructor, Josephine Withers, would not comment to the press. The New Feminists are a
powerful source of mischief because their leaders are not good at seeing
things as they are. Resenter feminists like Faludi, French, Heilbrun and
MacKinnon speak of a [mythic] backlash .... against women. .... There is no
radical militant wing of a masculinist movement. To the extent one can speak
at all of a gender war, it is the New Feminists themselves who are waging it. P198 Gender feminists are committed
to the doctrine that the vast majority of batterers or rapists are not fringe
characters but men whom society regards as normal - sports fans, former
fraternity brothers, pillars of the community. For these “normal” men, women
are not so much persons as “objects”. In the gender feminist view, once a
woman is “objectified” and therefore no longer human, battering her is simply
the next logical step. Just how “normal” are men
who batter? Are they ordinary husbands? These are legitimate questions, but
the road to reasonable answers is all too often blocked by feminist dogmas.
By setting aside the feminist road-blocks, we can discern some important
truths. Are the batterers really
just your average Joe? If the state of Massachusetts is typical - the large majority of batterers are criminals.
Andrew Klein .... found that almost 80% of the first 8,500 subjects of
restraining orders had prior criminal records in the state. .... The gender feminists
believe that the average man is a potential batterer because that is how he
is “socialised” in the patriarchy. But ideology aside, there are indications
that those who batter are not
average.... My prediction is that Mr.
Klein’s important findings will be ignored. What use is it to gender warriors
like Marilyn French and Gloria Steinem to show that violent criminals tend to
abuse their wives and girlfriends and other males as well? Their primary
purpose is to persuade the public that the so-called normal man is a morally
defective human being who gets off on hurting women. There are other important
studies that could help shed light on battering and could ultimately help
many victims who are ignored because their batterers do not fit the gender
feminist stereotype. It turns out that lesbians may be battering each other
at the same rate as heterosexuals. Several books and articles document the
problem of violence among lesbians.
.... p200 Richard Gelles claims that
whenever male researchers question exaggerated findings on domestic battery,
it is never long before rumours begin circulating that he himself is a
batterer. For female sceptics, however, the situation appears to be equally
intimidating. .... Suzanne K. Steinmetz, a co-investigator .... received
calls threatening her family, and there was a bomb threat at a conference
where she spoke. [When Erin Pizzey, who founded the first women’s refuge,
said she had found that 62 out of the first 100 women in her Chiswick refuge
were themselves violent, she received death threats and was given police
protection. In the end, however, she was forced to leave Britain for 15
years. After her return, I visited her at her secret address. At the
Sisterhood’s conference on DV to which I was sent recently by ManKind (See Ill Eagle 19), I correctly predicted
that Pizzey would not be mentioned. American researchers into DV who reported
finding female violence also report receiving death threats. -
Ivor Catt] . . |
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